1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a display for the rapid reading of text. In particular, the invention relates to a so-called Rapid Sequential Visual Presentation (RSVP) type display.
2. Description of Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, RSVP is a known display technique in which single words 10 of a document text are presented in their sequential order, one at a time, at a certain rate, at a fixed location 12 on a display 14. This has been demonstrated to provide a significant increase in reading speed, by removing the need for the reader to engage in saccadic activity (i.e. the distinct leaps made by the eye between fixations). Therefore, the reading speed is increased by avoiding the normal delay of eye movement.
This technique also uses very little screen space, and has been suggested as a display technique for small portable displays.
However, such a technique does not provide the reader with any contextual information which is normally visible when reading a page or section of text.
For example, when reading normally from a piece of paper or from a screen image of a whole document, the reader can see where he or she is within the page of the document. This contextual information can be useful in helping the reader to get a sense of the text structure which may be important for understanding a document. It also provides the reader with important navigational cues within the text which can support searching, or re-reading, or judgment about how much of the text has been read relative to how much needs to be read.
Even if the reader is not conscious of viewing a page, or section of text as a whole, such contextual information is normally available to the eye subconsciously. The lack of this information with the conventional RSVP technique illustrated in FIG. 1 means that the reading experience is different or un-natural for the reader, because the usual visual spatial information from a page or section of text is not available to the eye.